This paper takes a new approach based on forecaster-level data to estimate a perceived monetary policy rule month-by-month from 1985 until 2021. It shows that this perceived rule varies, that even sophisticated forecasters need to learn about the monetary policy rule, and implications for monetary policy and financial markets. The Federal Reserve’s monetary policy rule is perceived differently over the policy cycle, with easings perceived as quick and surprising, and tightenings perceived as gradual and data-dependent; these perceptions affect the perceived risk of long-term bonds, or the risk premium in long-term interest rates. Learning about the monetary policy rule can therefore shed light on “conundrum” episodes, when economically relevant long-term rates appear disconnected from monetary policy.

Recent research reveals that household inflation expectations are biased upwards, dispersed across individuals, and volatile over time, contrary to prevalent economic theory.

Despite a significant expansion in central bank balance sheets, some markets like the US money market have experienced increasing interest rate volatility, including significant spikes in the repo rate, notably in September 2019 (see Copeland, Duffie and Yang (2021), Correa, Du, and Liao (2021), D’Avernas and Vanderweyer (2021), and Yang (2021)). This apparent disruption in money markets that depend intimately on the availability of liquidity seems puzzling when the cash and central bank reserves held by the US private sector at the end of 2019 were around 4 times their holdings before the Global Financial Crisis in 2007. Greater liquid holdings do not seem to have made markets for liquidity more immune to liquidity shocks. Indeed, markets were disrupted yet again in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the banking system was found short in its ability to accommodate the demand for liquidity. In response, the Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet yet more (see, for example, Kovner and Martin (2020)), buying financial assets from the private sector and placing large quantities of liquid reserves with it (or promising to do so). Where had all the prior liquidity gone?